with the cluster of explicit dates in 1:1; 7:1, 12; 9:1, 5, 11, 15; 10:11, the vague dating of later events is striking. It hardly suggests that chronology is the primary means of marking the units of material in the book. Rather the clustering of dates around the exodus and Sinai experience has parallels in the flood story (Gen. 7–8) and in the account of the covenant of circumcision (Gen. 17) and marks these three episodes as particularly significant in salvation history (cf. J.P. Fokkelman). The